City Council unanimously rejects Mayor Johnson's proposed $300 million property tax hike
CHICAGO (CBS) — The Chicago City Council on Thursday unanimously rejected Mayor Brandon Johnson's proposed $300 million property tax hike, forcing the mayor and his budget team to go back to the drawing board to balance the city budget for 2025.
Aldermen scheduled a special meeting for Thursday to vote on Johnson's tax hike plan, and voted unanimously to reject it without debate.
"It's a devastating loss for Mayor Johnson," Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd) said after Thursday's vote. "I've been here going on 17 years. I've never seen this kind of vote take place, and I think in many of our lifetimes, we've never seen this. So it sends a message that that massive property tax increase he was looking for is not going to happen."
It had been clear almost immediately since Johnson announced his budget plan earlier this month that most aldermen would oppose his property tax hike plan, and in recent days the mayor signaled he was backing down.
"We needed to send a message today that weren't going to balance this budget on property taxes, working families," said Ald. Bill Conway (34th).
Johnson, who campaigned on a promise not to raise property taxes, has said he's willing to negotiate with the City Council on his proposed budget, but wouldn't commit on Tuesday when asked if he would support specific alternatives to his proposal to raise property taxes to close a nearly $1 billion budget gap for 2025.
After the meeting where his property tax hike plan was defeated, Johnson continued to avoid specifics on how he and his budget team would seek to balance the budget without his proposed property tax hike.
Johnson stressed that any further spending cuts should not mean scaling back city services.
"It's not just me and the City Council. No one in the city of Chicago want us to cut services," he said. "We cannot afford to go backwards and cut services to the people of Chicago, who rely on them."
The mayor declined to say if he expected a revised budget plan would include a smaller property tax hike. When pressed for specifics on how the city would pay for his budget plan without layoffs or furlough days for city workers, Johnson alluded to his failed bid earlier this year to increase the tax on sales of million-dollar homes.
"Where the money should come from is the ultra-rich in this state," Johnson said.
In March, voters rejected a referendum known as Bring Chicago Home, which would have allowed the City Council to increase taxes on the sales of properties worth $1 million or more to generate approximately $100 million a year to pay for programs to fight for homelessness.
Earlier this week, Johnson suggested that his proposed property tax hike was always negotiable, and that he never intended to dictate terms of the city's 2025 budget.
"So as a public-school teacher, sometimes we do things to get people's attention, and so now that we have the attention of everyone, I've said from the very beginning, this is a proposal," Johnson said on Tuesday. "For the first time in the history of Chicago, you're actually seeing that type of collaborative approach, and we will continue to engage with City Council."
Members of the City Council have been vehement in their opposition to raising property taxes. Johnson seemed to back off on his $300 million property tax hike plan in the face immediate criticism from the City Council after he presented his budget address last month, including from some of his closest allies. Many aldermen have made suggestions for alternatives to raise revenue, and Johnson has said he's willing to listen to every council member on how to balance the budget.
Some aldermen have recommended contributing less to the city's advance pension fund as an alternative revenue-raising solution. The mayor maintains his promise to fund the pension program.
Other ideas include raising the city's garbage collection fee; increasing taxes on liquor, cigarettes, bottled water, streaming services, cloud computing, or parking; or increasing other city fees. Johnson has remained noncommittal on any specific alternatives to a property tax hike.
"Whether it's a property tax or any other tax, people will be impacted. They will be. What we're working to do is to mitigate further harm, and the harm is the structural damage that we have to address in this moment," he said. "We're also committed to making sure that we're not cutting services, and [we're] investing in people."
The mayor repeatedly has said that he is not willing to accept layoffs or furloughs to city staff, leaving it unclear what spending cuts or other revenue sources the mayor and City Council might agree on to balance the budget.
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), who chairs the Budget Committee, which is still in the midst of department budget hearings, said he still believes it will be necessary to have at least some form of property tax hike to balance the budget and avoid cutting services Chicagoans rely on.
"At the end of the day, the state of Illinois has designed municipalities to run on property taxes. We have tried to do the best we can to avoid that. However, it becomes a point where some of those things are necessary," he said. "If you ask someone in a vacuum, 'Do you want taxes raised,' of course the answer's going to be no. But if you ask them 'Do you want your garbage service cut? Do you want garbage picked up every other week instead of every week? Do you want street lights on only for two hours instead of all night?' If you ask these questions, the answer will come different."
Several aldermen have also been critical of what they call Mayor Johnson's failure to collaborate on the budget.
"This is my fourth mayor, this is the first time I've seen that lack of collaboration, and this is why you get a 50-to-nothing vote," Waguespack said.
"We are now showing with a full unified voice that the Mayor's office needs to work with us to find an alternate way to balance this budget," said Conway.
Mayor Johnson has also taken criticism from Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul on his budget. Raoul sent a letter asking Johnson to "reconsider" his "proposed cuts" to the Chicago Police Department—cuts that would decrease the number of employees charged with fulfilling the department's consent decree.
Raoul added that such cuts would place the city at "significant risk of being held in contempt of court."
"Superintendent Snelling and his leadership team at CPD are building momentum toward effective, constitutional policing and, ultimately, a safer Chicago. I have had positive conversations with the corporation counsel and believe the right leadership team is in place at CPD," Raoul said in a statement. "Now is the time to build on their momentum, not to pull the rug out from under CPD's progress. Certainly, the city at large is facing budgetary concerns; however, targeting court-ordered reform work for budget cuts is simply not an option. Cutting back on key consent decree reforms like having adequate staff for officer training and expanding officers' access to mental health services would hurt both officers and the public. Now is not the time to take away the resources CPD needs to do the vital – and legally-mandated – work of implementing the consent decree."
Ervin said he believes cooler heads will prevail, and the mayor and aldermen will be able to find a way to pass a balanced budget plan by the Dec. 31 deadline.